


Full Of Grace

by speakmefair



Category: Horatio Hornblower (1998 TV)
Genre: Multi, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008, recipient:jade_starlight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-17 13:43:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair/pseuds/speakmefair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hornblower had never heard the Psalms phrased like that before, as though they had a rhyme and rhythm all their own, not one to be plain-chanted and so rendered intolerable to his tone-deaf ear, but to be said, and recognised, and remembered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Full Of Grace

**Author's Note:**

> With incredible thanks to the glitch-catching quoshara for the beta!

**i. loving and giving.**

If someone had informed half-pay captain Horatio Hornblower that he was to spend the Peace of Amiens alternating his time between nights in some very indifferent rooms that he shared with one former lieutenant, now a resentful Admiralty clerk, and a current, if held in limbo, half-pay lieutenant in the same situation as himself, and days kicking his heels with every other poor soul desperate for something to do, and ruining Whitehall's corridors with boots and ennui, he would have cursed them for idiots.

Had anyone further informed him that he would also have found some measure of contentment in this life that had hitherto, despite all energy spent in the pursuit of honourable duty, been surprisingly devoid of it, he would either have extricated himself from the conversation as quickly and politely as possible, believing himself to be in the company of a half-wit, or simply ordered the provider of such a ludicrous concept from his sight.

He had, after all, experience with both means of communication, and of the former far more than he would ever have judged desirable, or thought to be an essential factor in his (until then) promising career.

Archie had saved him from one - had saved the whole of the 'Renown' from its final effects, indeed, though how that initial respite had come about would never be spoken of or discussed again, all words used up in a little room in Kingston, as Commodore Pellew informed the three of them in no uncertain terms just what he thought of idiotic loyalty that seemed to believe it was best expressed by an exchange of lives and 'Confessions that no-one _not_ in the grip of a fever delusion would find remotely believable, am I making myself clear, Mr Kennedy?'.

Whatever he thought of it, it had been successful. Archie having taken the blame for Captain Sawyer's demise onto his own shoulders, and not having been believed, there was very little the court-martial could do other than ask everyone to go home. Even Foster had succumbed to irritation and heat and a desire to stop the destruction of quite so many reputations, and decided that it was in everyone's best interests to term the whole thing an unfortunate accident and stop the posthumous destruction of one of Nelson's own and a Hero of the Nile.

If it had the side-effect of making it highly likely that he would be free of all concerned for a few years following, that was an added delight that he carefully had not referred to in anyone's hearing, though what he wrote in letters to his wife was another matter.

Archie would, at times, imitate what he imagined said missives would contain, involving underscoring, exclamation marks, and incoherently Scottish prayer of thanks. Coming from a Scot, no matter how Anglicised, they were incoherent indeed, though one had caught Horatio's imagination, such as it was, and remained in his memory, which he knew to be excellent, albeit not often for such small things as this:

 _And from the Horns of Unicorns,  
Lord, safely me deliver._

"It's a psalm, you heathen," Archie had said irritably, but Hornblower had never heard the Psalms phrased like that before, as though they had a rhyme and rhythm all their own, not one to be plain-chanted and so rendered intolerable to his tone-deaf ear, but to be said, and recognised, and remembered.

Of course, the last time he had tried to explain that, Archie had been in the middle of a completely different kind of mockery involving Bush's industriousness, much as he was now, as said half-pay lieutenant tried, by the last of the evening light and a somewhat guttering candle, to finish darning the twice turned and slightly frayed ends of his good jacket.

"You're going to make someone a _lovely_ mother," Archie murmured at last, his eyes gleaming with a devilry quite at odds with the innocent blue of their colour. He was looking over the top of his papers as though the thought had only just occurred to him.

"Really," Bush said dryly, not even troubling to look up. "I assume that means I can chastise you in the conventional way? I am quite sure birch-rods can be purchased, even if I've seen no trees of that sort in the near area."

Horatio stifled a snort, and wondered just how many people Archie had driven to contemplating this course of action in his admittedly curtailed career. One, of course. One he knew of and would never in a thousand years compare the honorable, upright William Bush to. One who was so far outside the normal comprehension of man, even one steeped in sin, that he was closer to the devil than any turn or twist of maliciously loving wit Archie would ever engage in.

Simpson no longer cast a shadow over any man's life - had never even brushed close to that of Bush - but some things - some _knowledge_ , was ineradicable, and, like the poor and the sick, should always be with the men who had survived that evil. To know and accept evil's existence, Horatio knew from his former paths of study, from the fatalism and yet determination of the Greeks, was to half-defeat it before the beginning of any encounter with its details.

He was so far from fatalism himself as to be almost laughable, though he had tried his best to cultivate it. So much, at least, he had learned in Kingston, where two horrendous days that were far more torment than anything the court-martial could have devised for him had shown him that in the end, he, the sceptic and rational, could be brought to pray. Entirely selfish, and wholly sincere, he had been reduced to repeating to himself, over and over, sometimes in the quiet of his mind, that seemed empty but for the desperate little words, sometimes whispered aloud in the brief moments of solitude in his cabin, as the ship brought them closer to Kingston and hope of life, if not hope of maintained reputation:

 _Please don't let it be a choice. Please don't. Let them both live._

He was still not sure if it had been a plea or a prayer, but whichever it had been, it had been answered in the affirmative. He could still not bring himself to feel devotion, but he was conscious of the fact that he owed something, or perhaps, indeed, Someone, somewhere, a great debt.

It was a terrible thing, to have stood so often upon the barricade between life and death, cried out his position proudly in the name of duty and country and King, and never understood himself once to the degree that Archie had, never understood that the greatest of all things, greater than any of the stirring words that kept a man fighting, was love.

Bush, as taciturn as Horatio himself a great deal of the time, was less likely to say these words even than Hornblower was, but he at least could show it. Horatio, being able to do neither, was reliant upon their understanding, and this was yet another thing he could be truly thankful for, as it seemed they did.

It was in this way that he spent many of his evenings, not musing for too long on what could have been, for that way lay a kind of empty horror that he was as unable to contemplate now from the safety of the future in which none of it had come to pass, as he had been when it was a threat. No, he spent his time pondering on the vagaries of chance, and fate, and the whims of politicians, and that peace was not the word of safety he had thought it.

And Bush, imperturbably, continued his mending, and Archie managed to balance five pens, three inkwells, and what looked like half a safe's-worth of papers on the small and rickety writing-desk they had found, and Hornblower was content.

*

 **ii. fair of face.**

Archie didn't mind his somewhat lowly job at the Admiralty in the least. Mostly because it was infinitely preferable to death and disgrace, and an entire world away from _living_ in disgrace, which was what he had feared more than anything.

 _What if I don't die? What if I'm wrong?_

And always, more terrifying still -

 _What if I survive to swing upon the gallows?_

Fears such as those he had kept to himself, trusting blindly to a God that could not demand more of him than the sacrifice of his honour and reputation upon the altar of Horatio's career. Fears that, after his first glance at Horatio's white face and the bruised-looking shadows under his eyes, present in a way that he had not seen since the 'Justinian', he had managed to keep to himself even in the frightening lost times of delirium. He had concentrated only on the strong, warm steadiness of Horatio's hand, wrapped around his, the desire for life that seemed to be willed into him with that welcome touch, and swallowed down every moment of overmastering terror for his friend's sake.

All save one.

"I am a little afraid."

He had been almost beside himself with fear, but not of death, not of the unknown. He had been afraid of life, and the other death that awaited him should he survive. He had been afraid of what was being said of him, and afraid of what his family would hear of him, and afraid for his lost and disgraced name and how association with it might undo all he had intended with his courtroom confession.

It had never occurred to him that the Commodore would have as little use for the destruction of his reputation as he had for the destruction of his protégé's, but he was grateful for it, nonetheless.

Later, he had asked for a private audience with Pellew, and received only the brusque response -

"I hate waste."

It was the only answer he would ever get on the subject, but to Archie it was enough. That he had been thought of as worthy at least to that degree, that his name had no longer been found wanting or a liability, but instead a matter not to be taken lightly - not for his family's sake, for he doubted Pellew knew them from a whole in the ground - but for his own -

It was enough. It was more than enough. He would work to the end of his days in no higher a position than clerk, he would complete duties for which he should have been at the very least more highly remunerated, if not recompensed with a better position, he would do whatever was asked for him, because he had seen love as well as grief in Horatio's eyes, during the soul-dark and eye-glaring bright days of Kingston, and he had been given the time to live out his allotted span with the knowledge that this love existed.

For Archie, who had spent all his life since boyhood making a feast out of crumbs and kind words and the occasional affectionate smile, it was like opening his eyes to find that his imaginings had somehow changed, like in the fairytales of his youth, to a true banquet.

But as with all things, once he had been given what he thought he most desired, it was immediately insufficient, for he could not deny even to himself Horatio's affection for Bush, his high regard for him, the faith and trust he placed in him, and Archie, who had once believed he would be satisfied with even knowing he meant something at all to Horatio, found that he was, instead, jealous.

And yet it was Bush, whom Archie would have credited with almost every virtue but imagination or empathy, who had allayed that last feat, removed that most tainting and corrupting of emotions from their dealings.

"He needs us both. You may not like the fact and sometimes no more do I. But it's true. And you say yourself the Peace won't last. Would you prefer him to be alone when his duty reclaims him?"

All resentment and jealousy fled, then, for what answer to that could there be save "No."

No, and a thousand times over that word of negation, for Horatio could no more stop himself from self-castigation and his belief that his every skill and gift were frauds than he could from breathing. Bush never tried to jest or coax it away, but simply bludgeoned it out of existence with common sense, and yes, Archie conceded, yes, both were necessary to him.

He knew, too, that if only one of them had survived, Horatio's self-imposed guilt would have lost him the other, too, a different tarnish from jealousy and yet equally as potent. Here, like this, they might never be entirely happy, might never attain some mythical perfection, but they had balance, and joy, and an enduring bond of friendship and understanding, and that above all was what kept him reading documents and sifting through endless letters that contained almost no useful information at all, and mouthing politenesses equally to those he despised and admired.

For what he had been granted, he would have endured far worse, even to be one of those in increasingly outdated uniforms, waiting to be of some use.

He thought, sometimes, that it was the only reason any of them could continue with this life, half-paid and half-lived and eternally waiting for the Peace that none of them believed in to end.

So long as he could begin each day and know that at last, and however strangely, he was loved, he could have endured far worse.

When the Peace ended, he would, he knew, he would be the one left behind, the one waiting, the one caught in an endless moment of prayer and longing and inadmissible fear. He knew it, and embraced that knowledge, because to feel any of that meant that he had been given something to compare it to.

Malory would mean nothing to Horatio, bound by Greek and mathematics, still less to Bush, whose only education had come to him aboard ship. But Archie, who alone of any of them found delight in poetry and plays, in language that sang like Donne's mermaids, had found his comforting, amusing irony in the saddest parting of any legend.

"I take my vow of God," he murmured to the new sheaf of papers by his elbow, "in thee have I had mine earthly joy."

It was something he had never thought he would be granted, something he knew he should thank God for daily, and of all things he had learned in this life, Archie Kennedy had learned when to be grateful.

*

 **iii. works hard for a living.**

William Bush would have happily admitted, if questioned - which he never was, and a small part of him thanked God for it - that he was a man entirely without imagination or any undue sensitivity that might be a burden to him. He had thought on a number of occasions that it was one of the few gifts bequeathed to him at birth, and being as he could count those on the fingers of one hand and had sadly admitted a kind of dogged industriousness to their number long since, he was suitably grateful to it and willingly numbered it as an attribute and not a lack.

But even without imagination, he had learned in Kingston just what the cost of an excessive sense of honour and nobility and right could cost a man, and he had made himself a promise that no matter what the outcome of Archie Kennedy's brave and inevitably doomed gesture might be, he would do what he could to ameliorate the results.

He had foreseen, with a surprising clarity in one so lacking in a feeling mind's-eye, what the several cost might be, and who those costs would be paid by. He himself he knew to be safe - one voyage, no matter how disastrous, in the company of a man who had so willingly damned himself would scarcely even brush him with the tarnish of association. But Hornblower - ah, that was different, and he would have known it long before the agony he had seen on the other man's face as he informed him of Kennedy's intent.

He had seen that agony before, the desperate understanding of what was to befall them, the acceptance of loss even as the lieutenant railed against it. His own garden of Gethsemane had been a quiet, almost commonplace affair, less a longing to have the cup taken from him than a mild resentment that he should have been forced to recognise it was in his hands, and that it was his turn to swallow the bitter draught of mutiny.

But it had not been a draught made only for him, nor had the cup been untouched before it was passed into his keeping. Hornblower's had been, the responsibility of Sawyer's death and his an Archie's injuries resting firmly on his shoulders, and added to that poisonous brew a guilt and regret that Bush had almost failed to understand - would, indeed, have continued to regard with incomprehension were it not for his overhearing four whispered words that he suspected Hornblower had believed he had kept silent.

"Don't make me choose."

Had he thought, somewhere in his morass of guilt, that whether he or Kennedy lived or died was in his keeping? Or had it been more simple, more in keeping with the man and not the officer, that he had tried - and seemingly failed - to place the survival of one above the other? It was strange to think that he was even a minor consideration in this conflict, but strange or not, it was evidently the case. Perhaps it wouldn't have mattered who else it was, but only that it was Archie's life that hung in the balance, and that his was the survival that might tip the scales.

No. That was unfair, and unkind, and unworthy, and the only thing Bush was glad of in the whole sorry business was how fleeting that thought had been and how quickly he had discarded it. Hornblower did not give either friendship or loyalty lightly - indeed it had come as something of a shock to realise he had given it at all, and Bush was still not sure as to which of them that had said most about.

That he was needed, in whatever strange way, was enough - that this need had shown itself in a variety of unexpected ways, such as a thoroughly uncomfortable interview that Pellew had somehow felt the need to include him in, and an equally uncomfortable discussion with Kennedy about Hornblower following that, did nothing to lessen that sense that some circle in his life had been completed, that he had gained something whole.

In this world of London, which he hated, and peace, which he was coming to hate as much, and inertia and boredom and fretting for work, it was proving to be both consolation and the mainstay of his existence. The small, shabby rooms in which they could live in some degree of comfort, the pooled expenses, the new way of life that they had seemed to fall into without the necessity for comment or for explicit terms - it was none of it as he could ever have imagined.

But then, he had no imagination, after all.

And he was still astoundingly grateful for that fact, even when he seemed to be the only one who could light a fire or make coffee, even when he struggled more than either of the other two to make ends meet because he sent half his meager pay home to his sisters. He was grateful, because it was never expected of him to be anything other than he was, and that, he had learned over the years of subsuming his thoughts into a competent cipher, was a rare luxury.

*

 **iv: blithe and bonny**

Archie could always tell when the new daily habit of waiting outside offices had palled. It was not precisely difficult, since it was heralded by the arrival of one in his little cubby-hole that masqueraded as a private office, and completed by the arrival of the other. Since the little area was not truly designed for one person, let alone three, and Hornblower had a tendency to emphasise any point he wished to make with a sweep of his hands, it was also an extremely uncomfortable experience. Not that he objected, particularly, to close quarters, but he did object to having his papers sat on, pushed to the floor, or otherwise disarranged and mutilated. Besides which, the people for whom they were eventually intended had an incomprehensible tendency to complain when the work arrived in various stages of crumpled disintegration.

At least Bush was capable of ordinary conversation, or at least conversation that didn't involve being horribly serious about things that may or may not have been overheard and might or might not be based in fact, which unfortunately _was_ Horatio's idea of ordinary conversation, and which made him wonder about biting the other man, and not in any pleasurable way, but more in a way that would lead to 'I'm terribly sorry, is that your lifeblood all over my desk?'

He snorted to himself, and got two nastily identical looks of worry as to what had provoked it. The fact that both cases of worry stemmed from an increasingly thorough knowledge of just what he found amusing when he was bored, irritated, and stuck in this windowless little room without hope of escape for at least the next hour went some way towards soothing him, but not as much as it would have if he had, indeed, been plotting something nicely chaotic and trouble-causing for all save himself.

"Was there something you wanted?" he asked, not particularly nicely. They, after all, could be outside, which, despite the cold weather and the all-permeating fog, was infinitely preferable to four walls and a door which had to be propped open in order to let him continue breathing.

"Oh, we just thought we'd come and see if you needed help," Bush said, completely straight-faced, and for one wild moment, Archie found himself wondering if the man could possibly be serious.

"On all levels," he said a little desperately, "no - Horatio, please put those down, they're dull and boring and supposedly not for public reading, and I don't want to lose my job because you've felt it necessary to correct what little information it contains in the name of veracity. Really."

What was astounding was how Horatio, without seeming to change his expression at all, managed to convey the idea of pouting. It was very disturbing, and not something Archie really wanted to speculate about. He removed the papers from Horatio's grasp, and put them back with unnecessary, if pointed, care, on top of the pile he thought they had probably been liberated from.

"Actually, we're hiding," Bush said, looking around him with what must have been feigned surprise, since God knew he had been in the room enough times to know exactly what it contained - or rather didn't contain, since the only things that could really fit were Archie, a chair, his desk, and the free-standing item that seemed to contain a thousand pigeonholes and that never really got used. "Haven't you got a cupboard in here?"

Archie stared at him. "No," he said slowly. "Er, why do you want one?"

"To hide in." Apparently the madness was contagious, since that explanation had come from Horatio.

"You want to hide in a cupboard?" Archie was starting to wonder if he had fallen asleep at his desk and was slowly suffocating in his miserable little room, provoking dreams of an hallucinatory sort, because in his waking life, Horatio would never have said such a thing. Surreptitiously, he pinched his arm, and was convinced by the sharp pain that this was, in fact, really happening. "Good God, why?"

"One of the secretaries has children," Bush said with a faint shudder, and that seemed to explain everything for both him and Horatio, and left Archie even more bewildered.

"Yes?"

"They...escaped." Horatio obviously felt this was more detail than Archie should have needed, but then he had always been possessed of the rather irritating quality of assuming that everyone was in full understanding of every one of his mental processes. Archie, who had long ago come to the conclusion that Horatio was not so much startlingly brilliant as so startlingly obscure as to make the fact his plans worked all the more surprising, raised his eyebrows and waited for more.

"They're...somewhere around," Bush added. "Everyone's looking for them, but we've got more sense. We don't _want_ to find 'em. After this morning, I'm surprised their father wants 'em found at all, but there's no accounting for taste."

"So you're in my office, looking for a cupboard, because of - what, is there a pack of them or something?"

"No, just two," Horatio said, picking up the maligned papers once again. "It's really quite enough."

"Oh, come on, Horatio, what on earth could two small children do that's so appalling?"

The list turned out to be impressive. With nothing very much to do save worry over intangibles, the Admiralty had appeared to lose its mind _en masse_ , and welcomed the two boys, aged eleven and eight respectively, with an eye to being indulgent and amused. That attitude had worn off with almost insulting swiftness, as the first action of said children had been to liberate two very valuable ornamental swords from their pride of place in St Vincent's rooms, and begin an extremely inexpert re-enactment of the battle from which said worthy had received his title. On having the swords removed from them by an irate Lord of the Admiralty, they had moved on, through various forms of minor irritations, to a demonstration of just what marble banisters should be used for, which had culminated in an unfortunate meeting with Lord Spencer at the foot of the stairs. The elderly peer's famously kindly nature had not withstood a small, precisely aimed pair of feet in the centre of his face.

"So he yelled at them -"

"Well, more a foghorn mumble, since I think his nose was broken -"

"And they ran off."

The enjoyment of the peace and quiet had turned into worry - from the father's part as to where his offspring were, on everyone else's part as to what they might be doing. The entire building was being turned upside down in an attempt to find them, not from any desire to rescue them, but simply from a concern that the next discovery would be that there was a live show of how to construct a fireship going on somewhere.

"And you just know that whatever they're doing, whoever finds them is going to be held responsible," Horatio finished, with the air of experience.

"So you're hiding," Archie said with a grin.

"So we're hiding." There was, if one looked very carefully, a deep amusement lurking at the back of Bush's eyes.

"You're mean!" came an exclamation from under Archie's desk, and two tousled heads emerged from behind his knees like a demented form of a magician's box.

"Jesus - I mean holy - I mean what - hell!" Hornblower managed.

"We was bein' spies!" said the youngest in great affront.

"You're not very good at it," Bush said almost automatically, and then went crosseyed as he tried to look at his own mouth, which seemed to have got out of his control at some point.

Horatio glared at Archie. Archie shrugged.

"Well," he said in mitigation, "I don't have a cupboard, you know. And you wouldn't have fit under there anyway."

Horatio ran his hands through his hair, before summoning up every ounce of command he had ever possessed on board a ship.

"Right," he said in the tones that more usually betokened the direction of cannon, "you two - out. We're going to find your father. Archie - just - " Words failed him, and it was Bush who leaned in and said in his gravelly tones, his lips just brushing Archie's ear enough to make him jump and shiver -

"That birch rod, Archie? I may just have located one..."

*

 **v. far to go**

"So why were they there anyway?" Archie asked that evening, long after the candles had been extinguished and sleep was supposed to have come to more than just a gently snoring Bush, clearly audible through the thin wall that divided their bedrooms.

"Oh..." Horatio yawned. "His wife wanted to see her mother, and for some unaccountable reason, it was felt that the boys might be a little much to impose on an elderly lady of uncertain health."

"They were a bit much for a whole building full of battle-seasoned sailors," Archie pointed out in amusement, and was rewarded by Horatio's deep chuckle.

"But not for you."

"No, not for me." Archie grinned into the gloom. "This is where you say it's my affinity with brats."

"No," Horatio said, quiet and thoughtful. "This is where I say I know what those papers meant. The Peace will end, and soon, and you should -"

"Ah. Find myself a wife to provide me with sterling examples of young manhood for my very own?"

Horatio sighed. "Yes. Perhaps. Yes. It may be - you know the risks." He fell silent, his hand lying over the scars on Archie's side, mute reminder of all that those risks entailed.

"I know the risks," Archie agreed. "But I have no more of my heart to give, you know, and that would be a poor bargain for any bride, even if I had more monetary wealth to offer."

"I hate to - I don't want to think of you alone." For reserved, cautious Horatio, this was more telling than any romantic, heartfelt, eloquent declaration could ever be.

"I won't be." Archie smiled, and turned his head, and kissed the side of Horatio's head, saying into the soft haven of the dark curls -

"I am the most unique of men. I can both keep a candle burning and curse the darkness at once. And I can glory in both, because I have the life to do it. And if the waiting is longer than I would wish - well." He lifted his head, and put his hand to the side of Horatio's face, turning it so that he could look into the dark eyes, finding their faint gleam through the dimness of the room. "I will serve in my own way, and I will stand and wait. Does it matter, in the end, which one of us comes home?"

*

  



End file.
